Note 238 — Women in Greek Comedy

Even if it could be proved that the play ended with a wedding—such endings are, as we have seen, not uncommon in Aristophanes—and that this is what the grammarian means by his τἄλλα πάντα ἃ ἐζήλωσε Μένανδρος, this would not, in itself, be enough to make the play a romantic one after the manner of the later works. The marriage would have to be an act of reparation inspired by love, and it need hardly be remarked how utterly foreign any such feeling would be to the work of Aristophanes. Such a difference in spirit and motive, however, important and obvious as it seems to us, may very well have escaped the ancient critics, whose criticism of art was well-nigh exclusively concerned with its external and superficial qualities. Hence, if by any chance Aristophanes’ characters were despatched off the stage to the sounds of a wedding march, it is easy to see how clear a proof this would have seemed to them that the Cocalus belonged to the same phase of art as the plays of Menander, when, in reality, it did nothing of the kind.